Free Shine (Short Story) by Jodi Picoult

S EPTEMBER 1979
    On the morning of Ruth Brooks’s first day of class at the prestigious Dalton School, she sat in the kitchen of another family’s house, waiting for her mama to finish packing her lunch. “You act like a guest,” her mama instructed, spreading the same peanut butter on the same kind of bread that would be tucked into Christina’s lunch, too. “You don’t give them any reason to not invite you back.”
    In the past, Ruth had come only occasionally to the Hallowells’ home, but all that was going to change. Now, every morning, Sam Hallowell’s chauffeur would take her and Christina in a shiny black car through Central Park to the Upper East Side—Ninety-first Street—where she would be enrolled in third grade. At the end of the school day, she would return and play with Christina in her room or do homework in the kitchen until her mama finished working. Then they’d take the bus to Harlem, back to their own place, where Granny and Rachel would be waiting.
    Ruth knew that it was a blessing to go to this fancy school. In first grade, she and her sister, Rachel, had both gone to a school that was mostly Orthodox Jewish kids. Ruth had loved it—everything from the snap-together cubes for counting to the felt board with a floppy sun, a listless cloud, a thunderbolt, a snowflake. But it was a two-hour commute each way on the bus. In second grade, Ruth had gone to public school in Harlem. It was as different from her first school as possible. There were no books in the school library that didn’t have most of their pages ripped out. The teachers spent more time yelling than teaching. Rachel had never been an engaged student, but Ruth was having the life sucked out of her. She didn’t know what conversation between Ms. Mina and Mama had led to this full scholarship, but she had taken a test and done well, and that was that—she was in. And she was grateful.
    At least, she was supposed to be.
    She swung her feet on the kitchen stool, thinking of Rachel, who didn’t have to get up at 5:30 A.M . to go to school. Rachel was in fifth grade this year, and thought she knew everything. Like last night, she told Ruth that she would probably be the only Black girl in the whole school and nobody would talk to her. Ruth had asked her mama on the bus ride in whether that was true. “Ms. Christina will talk to you,” her mama had said. “You two have known each other forever.”
    But there was a difference between visiting the brownstone on a random Saturday and playing with Barbies, and actually attending the same school as Christina. Plus, Christina had gone to this school since kindergarten and already had friends. Just thinking about it made Ruth’s throat feel too tight.
    Christina bounced into the kitchen. Her hair was caught back in her favorite barrette, the one with silk roses glued to it. She carried a spotless pink backpack.
    “It’s time to go,” she said, her voice a musical scale. “You ready, Ruth?”
    Ruth hopped off the chair. Her mama straightened her cardigan and handed her one of the bag lunches. “Baby girl,” Mama said to Christina, “don’t you forget this.”
    Christina took the matching lunch. As Ruth followed her into the parlor, Ms. Mina was waiting with little Louis in her arms. He was only three, not even in preschool yet, and he was not having a lot of success at potty training. “Are you excited, Ruth?” Ms. Mina asked. “First day!”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Ruth said.
Excited
and
terrified
felt as if they might be one and the same.
    The sedan was already in front of the brownstone. The minute they walked outside, a man burst out of the car like a kernel of popcorn exploding. He opened the back door and gave a little bow. “Ms. Christina,” he said. “Ms. Ruth.”
    If Rachel could see this, she’d bust up.
Can’t they open their own car doors?
    Ruth just said thank you and buckled herself in. She and Christina waved to their mothers on the stoop until they couldn’t